


for now we see through a glass, darkly

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark, Evil Dean Winchester, Evil Sam Winchester, M/M, Minor Character Death, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Serial Killers, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-27
Updated: 2011-10-27
Packaged: 2017-10-25 00:32:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dean is a dark glass, holding no more than shadows and the flickering reflection of Sam's bloodied light...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkruns](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=inkruns).



> For Fall Fandom Free-For-All (2011). My plot bunny had a mind of its own and this didn't quite turn out like the Bonnie + Clyde it was intended to be, but I hope you enjoy!

Sam starts out small, with a bag of peanut M&Ms from a podunk gas station just south of Memphis. He’s six at the time, and already an expert at using that wide-eyed, puppy dog stare of his to avert suspicion.

John catches him with the bag forty miles down the road—too far to turn back, even if he’d wanted to. There’s a schedule to keep, after all. They have to be in Birmingham before dark.

He does take the bag away and give Sam a stern talking to about taking things without paying.

“How’s it different?” Sam demands stubbornly. “You don’t pay for stuff all the time!”

That’s Dean’s little brother, all right. Six years old, and he already gets that credit card fraud isn’t exactly on the up and up.

“It isn’t stealing if it’s something you need,” John answers, and then tosses the M&Ms out the window.

Sam sulks all the way to Alabama.

When John pulls over for a restroom break, he leaves them in the Impala—“under no circumstances are you boys to leave this car”—and Dean waits just long enough for him to vanish inside the McDonalds before unbuckling his seat belt and kneeling up over the seat to peer down at Sam where he’s sulking in the back.

“Next time,” Dean says in the practiced, superior tone of an expert. “Swipe the plain ones. I mean, _peanuts_ , Sammy?”

“I like the peanut ones,” Sam mutters mulishly.

Dean rolls his eyes. “He _likes_ ‘em. Well shit, maybe I just oughtta start calling you Dumbo.”

“Shit’s a bad word,” Sam points out. “Dad’s gonna spank you.”

“He won’t if you keep your trap shut,” Dean replies sagely, and then turns frontward again and sits back down.

He isn’t worried about Dad. He isn’t pleased by pricking Sam’s pride.

As he sits quietly and waits for his father to get back in the car, Dean Winchester doesn’t feel much of anything.

It’s pretty much par for the course.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

Peanuts doesn’t come close to describing Dean’s first take.

He’s five at the time; John’s been gone over a week and the babysitter flaked after the first day. Dean somehow senses that her defection is his fault. He hasn’t quite mastered the words and actions needed to blend in with the rest of the grayed out world yet. He can point to all of the moments when he does or says something wrong because John marks them for him. Sometimes, John looks at Dean with an uneasy, unhappy expression—like he isn’t sure Dean is human, let alone his son.

Dean doesn’t like that look. It makes his stomach flutter oddly and puts thoughts of their burning house firmly into his head. It makes him think that maybe John regrets saving him from the fire.

Better—safer—to learn his cues. And when he gets things right, and John smiles at him, Dean can almost believe the world around him brightens a bit.

At first it’s fine being home alone with Sammy, even if changing Sam’s diapers is difficult and the smell makes Dean’s eyes water. Then the food runs out—no more soup in their kitchenette, and no money for groceries. Dean would call for help, but he doesn’t know John’s number, and anyway he isn’t quite sure how to operate a phone.

Sammy needs to eat, though, so Dean makes his way over to the nearest motel and waits for the guy working the desk to hit up the bathroom. Then he walks around behind the counter, climbs up onto the vacated chair, and starts hitting buttons on the register until the drawer pops out.

He takes all ten twenties, then checks underneath the draw for good measure ( _John is always telling him not to take anything at face value_ ), and removes the hundred he finds there as well. Then he pushes the drawer shut, tears the register tape from the till, and lets himself back out of the office.

He breaks the hundred by buying three large pizzas from a trusting and not-too-bright Papa John’s employee, buys a few cans of Spaghetti-Os from the corner store, and then brings everything home.

Dean thinks he might get a spanking when John comes back and finds him sitting on the floor in a pizza coma with crumpled bills strewn over the floor around him and Sam with mashed Spaghetti-Os all down his face, and John does look pissed at first. After Dean explains what happened, though, John’s face gets pinched in a weird, uncomfortable way.

For a moment, Dean is sure that he’s done it again—he’s been wrong instead of right; he’s let his inner blankness out for John to see. Instead of berating Dean or smacking him a few good ones on the rear, though, John hauls him in for a hug.

“You did good, son,” he whispers as Dean confusedly but agreeably hugs him back. “You did real good.”

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

Sam is twelve when he makes his first kill.

It’s a mall rent-a-cop, in the wrong place at the wrong time. He comes up behind them while they’re helping themselves to the necessaries in the sporting goods store—Sam grabbing the ammo while Dean cleans out the safe in the back office.

The rent-a-cop is forty-something, balding and completely out of his element. He treats Dean like a threat and Sam like someone who needs protecting, putting Sam at his back without a second thought. He finds out how stupid a move that was moments later, when Sam uses a convenient aluminum bat to take out his left kneecap.

Dean has his gun back in his hands in a heartbeat, while Sam collects the rent-a-cop’s from the floor. His hands are steady on his Glock as the rent-a-cop screams and cups his shattered knee with both hands.

“Get the stuff and go wait in the car,” Dean says, taking care to speak loudly enough to be heard over the rent-a-cop’s cries.

“No,” Sam answers.

Dean frowns. He thought they were past this, thought that Sam understood that they can’t afford to leave witnesses—fuck the police; if John finds out what his sons are up to when he’s away or asleep, he’ll look at Dean with that expression again. The one that says he doesn’t know him. Dean’s aware he’s deficient in a lot of ways, but there must still be a few cylinders firing, because he’d do pretty much anything to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Instead of protesting, though, Sam says, “I want to do it.”

Dean blinks, aware that the uncomfortable, weird tightness in his chest is surprise. Sam is always prodding unaccustomed responses from him. He lights things up. He brings color into the world in a way that only John has ever done before him.

He’s _real_.

“You sure?” Dean checks.

The shift of the gun in Sam’s hands as the safety comes off says he is.

Some small part of Dean wants to forbid it—stealing is one thing, murdering another. If John catches Dean letting Sam do this, then he might actually kill Dean. He might kill Sam. Dean doesn’t really think he will—John has issues with killing people, grey and dull and difficult to keep track of as they are—but Dean isn’t a hundred percent sure.

Still, the thought of having Sam in with him on this completes a circuit in Dean’s chest that he never knew existed. Excitement, warm and coppery, trickles into his mouth. His heart beats quicker, and his fingers tingle faintly.

Distracted by the rush of sensations, Dean holds his tongue as Sam steps up close behind the still-screaming rent-a-cop. Without any visible delay, Sam sets the muzzle to the back of the rent-a-cop’s head and squeezes the trigger. The rent-a-cop’s screams cut off immediately, leaving their momentarily deafened ears nothing to hear but the echoing roar of the shot.

Dean couldn’t have done it better himself.

Sam lowers his arm to his side and stands quietly over the body with his head bowed. For a moment, Dean thinks that his brother is going to cry. He thinks that maybe it was too soon for this. Maybe he should have insisted on handling it himself the way he usually does.

If Dean brings Sam home crying, Dad is going to know for sure that something’s up.

Dean wavers where he is, unsure of what to do—how to correct his mistake—and then takes a step forward, meaning to go to his brother and at least lift the gun from his hand. He stops again as Sam asks, “That’s it?”

There’s no uncertainty in Sam’s voice. Nothing that sounds like the guilt or remorse that Dean hears from John sometimes. There’s just vague surprise and the blurry edge of disappointment.

As the last, lingering echoes of emotion fade back into stillness within him, Dean licks his lips. “That’s it,” he confirms.

Sam looks down at the body a moment longer and then lifts his head, looking over at Dean from beneath shaggy bangs. “Huh. I thought it’d be… you know. Something.”

Dean shrugs as he turns to head back into the office so he can retrieve the money the rent-a-cop made him put down when he surprised him there. “Life’s full of little disappointments, Sammy,” he says over his shoulder as he goes. “Make sure you get the ammo. And wipe down the counters this time, for fuck’s sake.”

All told, their score for that night’s work is ten boxes of shotgun shells, fifteen boxes of .45s for Dean’s Glock, and about two thousand dollars in cash. Sam wants to keep the rent-a-cop’s gun for some reason, but Dean talks him down to a single bullet from the chamber. Easier to hide from John.

“Freak,” he mutters as Sam palms the bullet on the drive back to the cheap motel where they’re staying on their way through to Colorado.

Sam’s squirming and too worked up to mind the insult, and he only flips Dean the bird before swinging his feet up into Dean’s lap and announcing. “I want ice cream. Can we get some ice cream?”

Dean raises one eyebrow as he glances over at his brother. “What’d you do, drink a couple liters of Coke before we left?”

“Huh?”

“You’re, like, bouncing off the walls.”

“Oh,” Sam says, and tips his head to the side thoughtfully as he rolls the bullet between his hands. “I dunno. I guess… I guess it was maybe kind of exciting. Back there.” He peers over at Dean with a shrewd, conspiratorial look on his face. “Don’t you ever get, I dunno, like, a rush? Afterwards?”

“What, after we rob somewhere?”

“No,” Sam says immediately, swinging his feet back down into the passenger well and frowning. “When you pull the trigger. It doesn’t…you don’t ever get pumped up.”

“Oh,” Dean says, belatedly remembering the rent-a-cop. He considers that brief, almost jazzed jolt that hit him when he realized Sam was serious about wanting to do it, but that doesn’t seem to be the same thing as what Sam’s asking, so he answers, “Nope. But hey, man. Whatever floats your boat. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

“You mean that?” Sam asks. His hand closes around the bullet and holds it tight.

A joke is on the tip of Dean’s lips, but something tells him that Sam is deadly serious right now—that his answer actually means something. He can’t ever be himself with Sam—it isn’t safe; Sam might look at him like John. He might _tell_ John. But Sam is looking for honesty right now, and Dean judges that it’s at least safe give him that.

“Yeah,” he says simply—and then, when Sam’s face splits into a wide grin, instinct prods him to add, “I mean, you’re a weirdo freak, but I love you.”

“Jerk,” Sam replies, leaning over and shoving Dean’s arm. He’s looking up at Dean just like he always has, with what Dean has come to recognize over the years as love and something like hero worship.

Good. That was the right response, then.

“Bitch,” Dean says, drawing on the worn response easily as he turns right into the parking lot of a darkened, deserted Friendlys. “Okay,” he adds as he pulls around to the back door, “What kind of ice cream do you want? Cookies and Cream or Rocky Road?”

In the end, they end up helping themselves to a scoop of everything and all of the cash in the safe. After all, there’s no point in wasting a trip.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

Dean is seven.

John is trying to teach him how to handle the buck of a pistol by bracing his entire body for it before he pulls the trigger, but Dean hasn’t been able to master the trick yet. He sees how much John needs for him to do this, though—almost as much as John needed him to learn his masks—so he waits for his dad to drink himself asleep and then helps himself to one of the guns he’s been practicing with. Then, after checking in on Sammy to make sure he’s asleep, he lets himself out of the apartment.

It takes two hours to walk himself far enough away to be sure the shots won’t wake John or Sammy, but when he has gone far enough, he breaks away from the road and heads into a patch of trees. Then, lifting the gun, Dean braces himself and pulls. When he finds himself flat on his ass, he gets up and tries it again.

He gets off three more shots before a voice from behind him says, “Drop it, sonny.”

When Dean turns around, he sees an old man coming toward him through the trees with a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. The old man is wearing boots and a long nightshirt and a ratty bathrobe. His eyes widen when the flashlight falls full on Dean, and his jaw slackens.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” he exclaims. “You ain’t nothing but a baby!” Frowning, he lowers his gun and starts forward. “Here now, give me that afore you hurts yourself.”

 _He’ll tell Dad_ , Dean thinks, already imagining the sheen of disappointment in John’s eyes. He brings the gun up without thinking, braces himself, and pulls the trigger again.

This time, he stays standing through the buck.

John doesn’t find out about Dean’s nighttime excursion, and when Dean keeps to his feet the next time they practice, he claps Dean on the shoulder in a way that makes Dean’s chest warm pleasantly in something that’s almost, but isn’t quite, happiness.

“See, son?” John says. “I told you, enough practice and you can do anything you set your mind to.”

Dean thinks fleetingly about the old man in the grove of trees, and of the old man’s wife who came out to check on him after that last shot. Dean barely even felt the buck that time, and it occurs to him now that John is right. Practice does help.

The memory of the old man and his wife grays and fades out again, blurring into nothingness.

“You’re a good shot, too,” John adds, lifting one arm to point at the bullet hole near the center of the target. “Got a natural eye and a steady hand. You’re going to make a fine hunter when you grow up.”

Dean draws on years of experience, works his face into a pleased expression, and beams.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

At thirteen, Sam has Dean figured out.

He pins Dean with his eyes one night on their way home from a job and announces, “You aren’t fooling me, you know.”

Dean, who was busy bobbing his head in time with the radio, pauses mid-bob and says, “Excuse me?”

“The whole bad boy, glib talking thing,” Sam clarifies.

“Glib?”

“Yeah, it’s like—you’ve got this mask you put on for people. But it isn’t you, Dean. I’ve seen you. Tonight, at that gas station? _That_ was you.”

Dean thinks back and remembers stepping over the clerk’s body to get to the register. He remembers casually shooting the girl who stopped by to get gas—he was busy in the drawer, so he glanced up long enough to aim and pulled the trigger and then went back to what he was doing. Sam was giving him a weird look when he came back around the counter, but Dean didn’t think much of it until now.

The thing is, Sam isn’t wrong. Dean knows he wears a mask—he needs it for his daily interactions with people. He learned early on that it made John uncomfortable when he was just himself. There were shrinks involved and everything, back when he was four. That babysitter who ditched them when he was five.

Then Dean learned to mimic, and he learned to mime, and everything smoothed out again. It’s gotten so that he doesn’t really have to think about plastering a smile on his face and charming a pretty waitress. Or wise-mouthing to a cop or pain-in-the-ass witness.

Television has been a great help. Lots of role models and examples to follow.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean says, sliding his hands around the steering wheel as he comes to a stop at a red light.

Sam snorts. “Please. You suck at lying. How can you be so good at faking it and so bad at lying to me and Dad?”

The light turns and Dean doesn’t move. His chest is too tight—not quite fear, but as close as he’s ever really come.

“Sam,” Dean starts, and then shuts his mouth as Sam’s hand closes around his arm.

“It’s okay, Dean. I won’t tell. I just—”

Dean glances over out of the corner of his eyes and sees Sam lick his lips ponderously as he chooses his words.

“I just wanted you to know that you don’t need to pretend for me.”

The tension leaves Dean’s chest in a rush of expanding warmth that he hasn’t ever felt before. The strength of the sensation leaves him a little dizzy.

“Okay,” he says in an oddly tight voice, and gets the car moving again.

After a few minutes, Sam says, “Dean?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you—I mean, you still love me, right? Even if you don’t feel things like most people?”

Dean blinks, glancing over and not even bothering to hide the faint flutter in his heart. “Dude. You have to ask?”

The nervous frown on Sam’s face melts into a smile and he beams the whole ride home.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

For once, Dean is slower on the uptake.

He doesn’t get Sam—really and truly get him—until Sam is kneeling in a puddle of intestines and laughing as he draws out more. Dean is twenty-six at the time, and nursing a beer up at the bar. He watches Sam slowly take the bartender apart and lets the understanding of his brother sink in.

Sam gets off on killing. He likes it. The messier, the better.

It seems like a waste of time and effort to Dean, but he supposes he doesn’t mind. Watching Sam’s joy in his work warms Dean’s insides, and the after party…

Well, it’s always worth the wait.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

Sam is eighteen the first time he has sex. Dean can’t believe it when he finds out.

“Wait, never?” he demands, sitting up in the bed. “You’ve never fucked anyone before? Not even a girl?”

“Have you?” Sam shoots back, cocky even now, with his hair all mussed and his ass leaking Dean’s come all over the sheets.

Dean huffs and drops back down onto the bed, splaying one hand over his brother’s chest. “That’s different,” he says. “I just never felt like it.”

How could he have, when the world is so washed out and dull? It’s like some kind of dream he’s living in, peopled by him and John and Sam and the countless bit part actors who roll in and out through Dean’s life like wisps of smoke.

There’s a moment of silence between them, and then Sam says, “You know, for your first time, that was pretty good. I mean, you know. Not a complete waste of time.”

Dean sees immediately what Sam is fishing for and sees no reason not to oblige. At any rate, it’ll be another opportunity to practice his new, unexpected skill set. Growling in mock anger, he rolls over and blankets Sam’s body with his own again.

“I’ll show you ‘waste of time’, Bitch,” he says, and Sam wraps his legs around Dean’s waist and purrs.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

When Dean is twenty-two, he and Sam kill four people in a diner. Sam says he needs the money, although Dean isn’t sure what he needs it for. They shoot the cook, the waitress, and the young couple who popped in for a bite—likely on their way across country on some sort of road trip.

Sam takes his time with the young man, he has this obsession with drawing things out, which Dean doesn’t understand but tolerates all the same. It gives him time to properly count their take and to dismantle the cameras over the register—lots more places with this sort of equipment, lately, which means that sooner or later they’re going to get caught.

Dean isn’t sure what John will do when that happens. He isn’t sure what _he’ll_ do.

Sam is flushed when he finally finishes, and when he stands up from the mess he made on the floor, he sways uncertainly. He’ll be like this for a few hours—jittery and almost high—and Dean, sitting on one of the counter stools, watches him come closer with a neutral expression.

“They’ve got pie,” he offers—Sam’s usually hungry after, and Dean’s feeling peckish himself.

“I don’t want pie,” Sam says—growls, really—and then he grabs Dean’s face with both hands and mashes their mouths together with more hunger than he’s ever shown for food.

Dean blinks, taken aback, and then jolts as that circuit in his chest snaps open again. He hasn’t ever seen the attraction of fucking before, but he can now. Suddenly, as though seeing through his brother’s eyes, he can see everything. The world’s grays are overly bright, exploding rainbows.

He brings his own hands up, hungry for more, and gets hold of Sam’s hair. Wrenching his brother’s head back, he sets his mouth to Sam’s throat and bites down, cock swelling for the first time and filling him with urgent, needy impulses he isn’t even sure what to do with.

“Dean,” Sam pants, letting go of Dean’s face and grasping his shoulders instead. “Fuck, _Dean_.”

Dean tears his mouth from his brother’s throat in a painfully strong swell of confusing emotion, then grabs Sam’s ass and says, “I want—Sam, I want—”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees as he hauls Dean up from the stool and toward the diner’s door. “And you better get us back to a motel room soon, because otherwise I’m going to make you fuck me in the car. I don’t care whether Dad smells it tomorrow or not.”

Dean isn’t sure he really cares himself, but his cautious habits are strong enough to keep him in check until they’re three miles distant. He makes Sam wait in the car while he rents a room—Sam got messy when he was finishing the young boyfriend in the diner—and then drags his brother inside their room and shoves him up against the wall and sets about taking everything he can.

If Dean had known sex would feel this good, he would have done it a long time ago.


	2. Breakings

Roughly three months after they start fucking, Dean wakes up to find the bed beside him empty. The mattress is still warm, though, which means Sam can’t have gone far. Dean waits for a few minutes, expecting to hear their small apartment’s toilet flush in announcement of his brother’s return. Instead, silence greets his ears.

Instinct—that small, sharp-toothed rodent—sits up at attention inside of Dean’s mind. He gets up, moving through the darkened apartment on ghost-like, padding feet. John’s door is open, just like Dean somehow knew it would be, and he hurries his steps, all but running as he crosses the threshold.

Sam is standing over John’s bed with a knife in one hand. He hasn’t woken John up yet, though, and he has his back to Dean, so it’s easy to clamp one restraining hand around Sam’s knife wrist and clap the other over his mouth. Dragging him from the room involves a bit of a scuffle, but John is a heavy sleeper and he’s still out like a light when Dean gets them out into the hallway.

Most of the fight goes out of Sam then, and Dean is able to hustle him out the door into the hallway—both of them bare-chested and –footed and with Sam still holding onto the knife. Dean gives Sam a little shove before letting go of him and shutting their apartment door.

“Laundry room. Now,” he says, borrowing on years of mimicry to make his voice as furious as he knows it needs to be to get a response. He leads the way himself without waiting for Sam to follow. He isn’t worried about Sam bursting back into their apartment to finish what he clearly intended to do. Now that John is out of sight and Dean is awake, they’re going to have this out between them first.

The laundry room is also the boiler room, which makes it both noisy and dingy. At this time of night, though, it’s also private, which is what counts. Dean stands in front of the dryer with his arms crossed over his chest and meets Sam’s scowl with an angry expression of his own. It isn’t precisely anger he feels—more like a trickling current of tension over the breaking of God only knows how many of the laws that govern his world—but Sam needs to see how serious Dean is about this.

“Okay, so what the fuck, Sam?” Dean demands, deliberately making his voice harsh. “Dad? You seriously want to stick that thing in _Dad_?”

“He’s in the way,” Sam blurts. His hand flexes around the knife handle in a way that makes Dean remember the girl his brother diced last week before climbing into Dean’s lap and riding him raw.

Dean shakes the memory loose and asks, “In the way of what?”

“Us!” Sam yells, throwing his arms wide in a display of temper that dwarfs anything Dean has ever seen from his brother—and that’s saying a lot. It seems sometimes like Sam got Dean’s share of emotions in addition to his own.

Dean stares at his brother for a moment, nonplussed, and then guesses, “Is this because I wouldn’t fuck you tonight?”

“No,” Sam protests with an embarrassed flush indicating that it is, at least in part, because of that. “Don’t you see, Dean? You—you’re holding yourself back, man. And you could be—fuck, you could be _glorious_ , if you’d just stop worrying about whether Dad’s going to find out what we’re doing!”

“We’re not killing Dad,” Dean insists.

“He’s not one of us!” Sam shouts, slashing the air with his knife. His eyes are wild with a depth of rage approaching insanity, and Dean thinks maybe that’s why he isn’t making sense. He’s noticed that about emotions. They tend to get in the way of rational, expedient thought.

“He’s our dad, Sammy,” Dean reminds him, “Of course he’s—”

“If he’s one of us, why don’t you tell him, huh? Why don’t we bring him along on one of our little excursions?”

Dean shakes his head. Sam’s logic is bewildering, and trying to fit what Sam is saying together with the things Dean knows to be true makes his brain ache.

“Just because he doesn’t understand doesn’t mean he’s not family,” Dean maintains. “I’m serious about this, Sam. You don’t touch him.”

Sam’s mouth works like he’s getting ready to spit something acidic and corrosive, and then he stills. His mouth twists in a nasty, cold smile. “Maybe I shouldn’t touch him. Maybe I should just tell him what his precious golden son has been up to behind his back all these years.”

Dean’s stomach loops at the thought, like the floor moved beneath his feet. John can’t know. If John knows, he’ll give Dean that look, and then Dean’s entire world will upend itself. He’ll lose even the faint trace of colors John offers from time to time.

Sam’s colors may be bright enough to compensate, but they’re different. They don’t calm and soothe like John’s do.

“He wouldn’t believe you,” Dean whispers, although he’s suddenly on uncertain ground.

“I have my scrapbox,” Sam reminds him with a smile. “There are some pretty damning things in there. And you were there for each and every one. You really think you’ll be able to lie about that to his face?”

No, Dean doesn’t. He can evade, and he can omit, but he can’t sell a direct lie. Not to John.

Fear is an unwelcome, lukewarm invader in Dean’s chest. It launches him across the laundry room, wraps his fists in Sam’s shirt, and shoves Sam back against the wall. The knife is in Sam’s hand—Sam could easily bury it in Dean’s side if he wanted to—but there’s no hot sting. Sam is grinning beneath Dean’s hands, and when Dean presses him into the wall more firmly, he realizes that Sam is hard.

Sam is actually enjoying this. He’s enjoying scaring Dean—getting an emotional rise out of him.

“I’d kill you,” Dean snarls, drawing more urgently on that smirking, Winchester persona that gets him by so well with John. “You hear me, Sam? I will waste you before I let you tell him.”

The beam of pleasure on Sam’s face crumbles. His eyes flash with hurt and his lower lip quivers. It leaves Dean at a loss to see Sam’s expression so broken, but he can’t back down. He has to hold this family together, and if this is what it’s going to take, then so be it.

“You’d pick _him_?” Sam whispers as his eyes fill with tears. “You—you’d seriously pick him?”

Dean’s throat aches and his head pounds—real doozey of a migraine starting.

“Don’t make me choose,” he begs with something approaching honest desperation. “Sammy, please. You two—you’re all I have. I can’t—I can’t lose either one of you.”

“I can’t share you with him,” Sam replies. His voice sounds just as low and hoarse as Dean’s. “I—Dean, I need you. I need you to be mine.”

“I _am_ yours,” Dean protests.

Sam still looks wrecked, though—he looks like Dean just stuck a blade into his heart—and his eyes hold nothing but defeated sorrow as he says, “Prove it.”

Dean knows what Sam means—he wants Dean to tell John or kill him, either would do—but he won’t. He can’t. He only has two tethers in this world, and that leaves him lonely enough. He can’t imagine losing one.

So instead, he does the best he can and kisses Sam. He kisses Sam the way he knows Sam likes it—slow, warm molasses heating to flickering fire—and when Sam is ready, he shoves Sam’s sweatpants down around his ankles. A couple of dry fingers are enough to get Sam primed ( _Dean might not have fucked Sam earlier tonight, but he gave him a pretty good ride this morning_ ) and then he drops his own sweatpants and pushes up and in.

Sam claws Dean’s back while Dean fucks him—marking Dean, and Dean will be lucky if he can hide those scratches from John long enough to be seen with a girl so that his dad will incorrectly infer their origin, but he doesn’t make Sam stop. He doesn’t even complain when Sam’s knife slices a thin, stinging line up the side of his ribs.

The pain is real, just like it always is. It makes Dean real, just like Sam and John do. It anchors him. It bleeds color into his life.

The knife clatters to the cement floor and Sam’s fingers are there, pushing into the cut and widening it into more of a gash—still shallow enough, but throbbing with new, intense fire. Dean hisses, speeding his thrusts and biting down helplessly on Sam’s neck. He comes like that, fucking into Sam as hard and as fast as he can manage while Sam’s fingertips smear blood across Dean’s skin.

In the morning, Dean waits for John to comment on the obvious hickey on Sam’s throat and the too-wide, careful way he walks. He waits for John to ask about the missing gauze and thread from their first aid kit, which Dean nicked to fix up the knife-wound along his side.

John doesn’t say much at all, though. He’s too distracted by news of yet another possible lead on the thing that killed Dean’s mom.

Dean slides his foot up next to Sam’s under the breakfast table and gives him a hopeful, conciliatory smile. For some reason, the expression only makes Sam glower more. There’s murder in his eyes as he shifts his gaze from Dean to stare at John’s back.

It’s times like this that Dean wishes he understood emotions more. Then maybe he would know what to do. Then maybe he’d know why this expression isn’t working now, when it has always worked so well in the past.

But it isn’t like he can ask Sam what he’s doing wrong—not when it’s Sam he’s messing up with. Can’t go to John either, because John can’t know. Which leaves Dean on his own to muddle through as best he can.

In the end, he can only keep his head down, and his eyes open, and try to be quick enough to avert his brother’s knife.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

Despite his awareness of Sam’s intent, the second time Sam almost kills John, Dean is too shocked to act until it’s almost too late. It’s Stanford that has him blindsided—after months of squabbling with Sam over just where his loyalties lie, and how much Dean has of himself to give versus how much Sam claims to need. Sam has been increasingly brutal and messy with his kills—he’ll use nearly any excuse now, whenever he and Dean are out on their own—and correspondingly more insatiable in bed. Dean has sensed things were coming to a head, but he didn’t figure it would be anything like this mess.

How can Sam do this to him? How can he just pick up and _leave_?

Stung by an overpowering sense of loss—Dean didn’t know he could feel anything this strongly, and he wishes he couldn’t, because it hurts—Dean is slow to recognize Sam’s reach around to the small of his back for what it is. Once he has sussed it out in his head, it takes several more precious moments for him to understand how Sam intends to use the knife.

Only then does he launch forward, gripping Sam’s wrist and forcing the knife back into its sheath. Sam’s muscles bunch, fighting him, but Dean still outweighs his brother despite Sam’s string bean height, and it isn’t really a contest.

Dismissive of the fact that his two sons are wrestling over a weapon, John levels a dark look at Sam and thunders, “You walk out of here and you don’t come back, you hear me?”

“No,” Dean says, head coming up. His hold on Sam’s wrist loosens. “Dad, come on. Just—let’s all take a break until we cool down, okay?”

“Fine!” Sam spits. He breaks away from Dean, which is a concern until Dean sees that Sam is headed for his room rather than John’s throat.

“I don’t need you!” Sam yells over his shoulder as he goes. His eyes find Dean and sharpen viciously. “I don’t fucking need either of you!”

More of that sharp pain laces Dean’s ribs, and he’s moving after his brother before he knows he means to. John catches him by the arm, dragging him to a halt.

For a hot, blind moment, Dean thinks about pulling out his gun and doing what Sam wants him to do. One quick shot and Sam will stay. He won’t leave Dean.

Then reality reasserts itself. He can’t kill John. John is real. One of three splotches of color in a grey world—or maybe one of two. Dean has doubts about himself sometimes.

“Talk some sense into him,” John growls in Dean’s ear, and then roughly turns him loose and stalks off in the opposite direction toward the kitchen. Probably to get himself a drink.

Dean doesn’t waste any time before obeying his father’s order—particularly because it also means following his own impulses. He jogs down the hall and into the room they share, which is empty. Dean stops, all of his impulses run down into a frozen blankness. Nothing he has ever taught himself prepared him for this, and he doesn’t know what to do now that Sam is missing.

Then, unexpectedly, Sam hits him from the side, knocking Dean into the wall and shoving the door shut on his way past. Adrenaline floods Dean as he tries to figure out if he should be fighting—if he can bring himself to fight—and then Sam’s tongue is in his mouth. Sam grips Dean’s cock through his pants, working it, and kisses Dean with all the rage and ferocity he usually brings to his kills.

This message is easy enough to interpret, and the routine even simpler to follow. Dean kisses back, clinging to his brother’s shirt. He chases Sam’s lips when Sam pulls far enough away to say, “Come with me.”

This isn’t part of the script.

“What?” Dean says numbly.

“Come with me,” Sam repeats, still rubbing Dean’s cock through the stiff denim. “We don’t even have to go to Stanford, just—I can’t take this anymore. I can’t see the way you look at him—like he matters.”

“He _does_ matter, Sam,” Dean insists.

He’s certain if he just explains it enough times Sam will see. Sam will understand what this constant tug of war is doing to Dean’s sanity.

“Me or him, Dean,” Sam continues, plowing ahead as though Dean hasn’t even spoken. “You have to chose, because I can’t live like this. I’m not sharing you anymore. I can’t.”

“Sammy, don’t. I can’t—I can’t choose between you and Dad,” Dean pleads, and then shuts his mouth again as Sam lets go of him and steps back.

Sam’s expression looks almost as much a mask as one of Dean’s less practiced faces. It would be interesting, if it weren’t so indicative that Dean has really fucked this one up—hasn’t just missed one cue but a hundred. Sam’s eyes are bleak, as though all of his vibrant colors have been sapped by Dean’s usual grey.

“You just did,” he says hoarsely, and then stares at Dean, waiting for him to refute it.

Dean doesn’t know what he can say, though. There are too many options, and he’s sure most of them are wrong.

He’s still trying to decide the most logical course of action when Sam finishes packing his bag and steps out of the room. Sam doesn’t say anything as he leaves, and Dean doesn’t move to stop him. He’s still standing frozen in their room when the front door slams less than a minute later.

From down the hall, Dean thinks he can hear his dad crying—or maybe snarling. The sound is startlingly loud in the stillness of Sam’s absence. Dean fingers the rough denim of his jeans and then prods Winchester, good son and brother, to the front of his brain.

A normal person would drink, he thinks. A normal person might yell or cry.

He thinks he might see Sam on his way to the bar, but the driveway is empty, and in the end he doesn’t see his brother again for almost four years.


	3. Bloody Mary

Charlie doesn’t really want to go back to those two guys, but they seem to be the only ones who know what’s going on. And when it comes to choosing between the very definite danger of that horrible figure she keeps seeing reflected everywhere, and the low-grade, unpleasant unease Charlie felt when she was alone in Jill’s room with them, Charlie will pick a case of the jitters over dying any day of the week.

Anyway, that Dean guy was normal enough—he was maybe even flirting with her a bit. Whatever difference she thought she sensed in him up in Jill’s room, it was probably just her imagination. Even if the tall guy gave Charlie the creeps from the jump, Dean’s safe. He won’t let anything happen to her.

So she dials the number they left her and then waits anxiously out in the bright sunlight for them to pull up to the curb in their black, rumbling car. The tall guy—Sam—unfolds himself from the passenger seat and comes over to her. Charlie rubs her arms and wishes that Dean would get out too.

“We’re taking you back to our motel room,” Sam says, grasping her arm and drawing her not toward the car, but along the sidewalk.

“W-what about Dean?” Charlie asks. She glances over her shoulder and Dean is pulling away from the curb, sliding his oversized ride easily back into traffic.

“Can’t cover the mirrors when he’s driving, so I’m going to walk you there,” Sam answers. “It isn’t far.”

“Oh,” Charlie says lamely, and then falls silent. She’s still out in the open, and there are plenty of people around, but the flesh on the back of her neck is crawling.

Sam keeps looking at her.

Charlie does her best to pretend she doesn’t notice, but she’s so tense her stomach is aching, and she’s really starting to think she made a bad decision here.

“I, uh,” she says finally. “I think I should call my parents.”

Sam’s hand tightens on her arm when she tries to pull away. “Dean’s waiting for us. You can call from the motel.”

“Can we get something to eat on the way, then?”

“We’re there,” Sam says, turning sharply to the right and hauling her toward a skuzzy looking Motel 8.

Charlie scans the parking lot for their black car, but she can’t see it anywhere. “Where’s Dean?”

“Picking up some burgers. We figured you’d be hungry.”

Charlie’s nerves jangle even louder, and she starts to dig her heels in. She still can’t quite believe it, though—she can’t believe anything could possibly be happening to her—so she doesn’t scream as Sam drags her around the side of the building. By the time screaming crosses her mind, Sam has shoved her up against the motel wall and covered her mouth with one huge hand.

“You think I wouldn’t see how you looked at him?” Sam hisses, pressing her head harder against the stone wall. His face swims in Charlie’s vision, and she realizes that she’s crying. “As if he even sees you.”

Something cold and thin traces lightly over Charlie’s throat.

“Bet he won’t even notice you’re gone when I meet him back at the motel,” Sam says. He sounds… excited... which is more terrifying than everything else all put together.

 _Don’t let him hurt me_ , Charlie thinks desperately. _Oh God, please…_

It does hurt, though. In the end, it hurts quite a bit.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

It doesn’t occur to Dean until after Bloody Mary has melted into a viscous puddle on the floor that something is missing. He frowns, picking shards of glass from his palms and scuffing his feet against the floor. They can’t stay here forever—the cops who tried to arrest Dean earlier will wake up at some point. It would be so much simpler if he could have just taken care of them the way he takes care of interference on money runs, but John would surely hear about deaths on a job.

Their dad might not be answering his phone right now, but Dean is under no illusions. John’s checking up on them. He’s checking up on Dean.

Just because John is out of sight, doesn’t mean Dean can afford to get sloppy.

“You ready?” Sam asks.

“In a minute,” Dean answers absently, turning in a slow circle and trying to figure out what he’s misplaced. Nothing seems glaringly absent in the shop, though, so he runs his mind backwards. Sam offered to summon Mary over dinner. Dinner was preceded by some mind-numbing sex—Sam came into the motel room like his blood was on fire, practically climbing into Dean’s lap and fucking himself down on Dean’s cock. And before that…

Dean blinks.

“Where’s the girl?”

“Who?” Sam asks, sounding far too innocent.

“The girl,” Dean repeats as he turns to face his brother. “Charlie. You were supposed to bring her back with you.”

Sam’s satisfied expression tells Dean exactly where the girl is, though, and Dean frowns. This sort of behavior isn’t acceptable.

“Dude,” he says. “You’re supposed to be good while we’re working. We don’t kill people, remember? We save them.”

“Wrong,” Sam snaps. He steps forward with quick, sharp movements, backing Dean up against the broken mirror frame and looming over him. “That’s Dad’s crap, Dean. And in case you haven’t noticed, Dad’s not here right now.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Dean maintains.

“Oh, come on,” Sam scoffs. “Don’t try to tell me you care. She’s not real, remember? None of them are.”

It’s the first time Sam has ever mentioned Dean’s … peculiarity… in such blatant terms, and Dean’s skin prickles with cold at the sound of his inner thoughts tumbling out into the open.

“Shut up,” he whispers, taut with the irrational thought that John will somehow hear. That he’ll somehow know and be disappointed in Dean.

Sam leans in closer, breathing over Dean’s slightly parted lips. “This is me, remember?” he murmurs. “You don’t have to pretend.” Sam grips Dean’s hand and rubs his thumb over the pulse point in Dean’s wrist. “Come on, admit it. Admit you don’t care. You’re just worried because you think Dad’ll find out. Newsflash, Dean. He _left_ you.”

Dean doesn’t know how to respond to that attack, so he takes refuge in his studies and decides on anger as a reasonable reply. With a reflexive snarl, he shoves forward suddenly and violently enough to knock Sam back on his ass.

“We don’t kill on the job, Sam!” he yells, just like he’s seen Sam himself rave on occasion. “It’s the rule. You don’t break that! You don’t!”

Sam may or may not remember that Dean is basically acting right now. Either way, he seems to sense that he overstepped, because he sits docilely on the floor and says, “I needed a secret, Dean.”

Dean pauses, checked in his display of anger, and cocks his head.

“We needed to summon Bloody Mary to waste her, didn’t we?” Sam presses. “So I made a decision. I was careful, I promise. By the time they find her, we’ll be long gone. And I didn’t even do it near the motel, so no one’s going to connect us to it.”

The faint emotions that might have been bubbling inside of Dean snuff out with the suddenness of a water-doused match. They aren’t done having this conversation—he knows Sam well enough to recognize that Sam wasn’t being expedient, he was following his urges. Still, Sam’s right. They did need a secret.

“Don’t do it again,” Dean mutters, and then lets the issue drop from his mind as he pulls Sam back to his feet and guides him past the unconscious cops out the door.

Then, considering the possibility that one of the cops was alert enough to have heard their argument, he turns around and heads back in, cocking his gun as he goes. He and Sam can always dump the bodies off a bridge afterward. They probably won’t be connected with a break and smash on the other side of town.

Sam reverses course alongside him, practically vibrating with excitement. He doesn’t say anything, but the question is clear in the way he unsheathes his knife and picks at the tip with his thumb.

Dean sighs, rolling his eyes, although they both know he doesn’t have it in him to deny Sam anything.

“Just don’t take all night this time, all right?” he mutters, moving closer to the cop on the right and setting the muzzle of his gun against the unconscious man’s forehead. “I want to get moving before dawn.”

If Sam makes a response, it’s lost in the retort as Dean pulls the trigger.


	4. Asylum

James’ three o’clock—“Sam Jones”—turns out to be a tall, slender man with a brilliant grin. He’s also evasive, continually trying to turn the topic around to James’ family and past history, rather than putting the focus on himself, where it belongs. James has had plenty of experience with this sort of thing, though, and it’s only a matter of time before he’s found a topic Sam is eager to discuss—aside from Roosevelt, that is.

“Sounds like you two are close,” James observes as Sam finally trails off.

“Yeah, we’re pretty close,” Sam agrees.

He smiles, and James thinks to himself that he’s never seen a nicer looking expression. He smiles back.

“Most people don’t get him, though,” Sam adds, leaning forward conspiratorially. “They just—they don’t see the real him.”

“Because your brother keeps them at a distance?”

“He wears masks. Dad taught him to. He isn’t what I’d call supportive of Dean’s character.”

“But you are?”

Sam’s smile widens. “I’m going to show him how to be himself. I’m pretty fucking sick of watching him put himself through the paces of a man who can’t even be bothered to pick up the goddamned phone. I’m going to show him if I have to rip open Dad’s skin and tear out his spine.”

It’s said in the same, pleasant tones that Sam has used for the rest of their session, and ice spills down James’ back. He waits for Sam to laugh awkwardly—waits for some indication that what he just heard was nothing more than a bad joke. Instead, Sam reaches down toward his ankle and slides a knife out from beneath his jeans. James notes incredulously that this is the first time he’s seen anyone use an ankle sheathe in real life.

“You can scream if you want, Doc,” Sam says in a pleasant, reasonable tone. “It’ll bring your secretary running, and someone will call 911, and Dean’s going to have to clean up the mess before they get here. He’s very quick, though. Not like me.”

James seems to be having a horrible nightmare. And on top of that, his throat is paralyzed. Maybe the cat is sleeping on his neck again. It wouldn’t be the first time reality and the dream world have collided.

But if this is a dream, why does the wet, humiliating heat in James’ pants feel so real?

“Tell me something, Doc,” Sam adds as he goes to his feet—Christ, was he this tall when James led him in? “Dean has this problem with emotions—probably because Dad was such a dick to him when we were kids. Or maybe it was watching Mom burn up on the ceiling, I don’t know. But here’s the thing: he doesn’t really process people all that well. I mean, he loves me, and he somehow loves Dad, but you? You might as well be part of the scenery. So what I want to know is, do you think I can teach him to enjoy killing? Or is that just going to keep on being a non-event for him?”

Something small and aching is trying to crawl out of James’ throat. He hears himself utter a soft, nearly inaudible moan.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Sam says, nodding. He twirls the knife expertly in his hand, letting the afternoon light glance off the blade. “We’ll just have to give it the old college try and find out.”

 _Just a dream_ , James tells himself as he watches the knife come nearer. _It’s just a dream._

Up until the moment the knife slices into his face, he even believes it.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

“I’m sorry.”

It’s got to be the tenth time Sam has apologized. Dean’s starting to get tired of the repetition.

“I’m alive, you’re alive. We’re cool.”

“No, Dean,” Sam says urgently, and this time he actually catches Dean around the arm. Dean is filled with the urge to shake the touch off, which tells him how not cool they are. He can still feel Sam’s fingers digging into his throat. He can hear Sam’s brutal, cruel words echoing in his ears.

 _You fucking defect! What good are you if you can’t feel? Huh? Jesus Christ, no wonder Dad left—no point in staying with someone who isn’t even a real person._

“I shouldn’t have said those things,” Sam says now, in a voice that bears no resemblance to the nasty sneer stuck in Dean’s head.

“Yeah, well. You did.”

“I didn’t mean it, though!”

Dean sighs internally. Sam keeps expecting him to be hurt by what he said, and Dean supposes he might be. There’s a slight ache in his chest that shouldn’t be there, anyway. Still, he can’t work up the emotions Sam seems to expect, and that’s the whole problem, isn’t it?

Oh, to hell with it. If Dean can’t feel what Sam wants him to, he can still act as his brother expects him to.

“Oh, really?” he snaps, finally jerking his arm free in a practiced show of anger. “Cause it sure as hell sounded like you did. You don’t want to hang around with Pinocchio, you can go find someone else to put up with your bullshit.”

“I don’t want someone else,” Sam insists, lurching after Dean as Dean starts to move away. “I want you. I _love_ you.”

The ache Dean has been quietly nursing in his chest since their confrontation in the asylum’s basement grows briefly too intense to handle. It’s bewildering—he hasn’t ever felt anything this strongly before, not even during Sam’s last outburst before he left for Stanford—and he dives more deeply behind the safety of his habitual masks and studied responses.

“Fuck you, Sam,” he bites out. His eyes water briefly with unshed tears before spilling over and running hot moisture down his cheeks. His voice thickens with studied emotion. “I trusted you. I cared about you. I thought you cared about me.”

“Stop it.” Sam’s voice is a lash. “Just—just fucking stop it. Don’t pretend with me. I hate it when you pretend with me!”

Dean blinks, shrugging out from underneath the mask as easily as he put it on, and observes, “I thought this is what you wanted.”

“I want you to be yourself!” Sam yells.

Okay, now Dean is genuinely confused. “I am myself.”

Sam shakes his head and clarifies, “Not just when we’re alone. I—I hate to see you performing for people. You shouldn’t have to do that.”

Oh. This again. Dean glances down at his feet briefly before lifting his eyes back to Sam’s face.

“People don’t respond well to me, Sam,” he explains patiently. “I can’t do the job if I can’t get them to open up. No one likes to talk to a robot. Hell, even you seem to have a problem with it.”

“I don’t,” Sam insists fiercely. “And you’re not a robot. Look, I just—I wish you could feel what I feel when I take a life. I want it to _mean_ something to you, like it does to me. You blew away ten people at Dr. Ellicott’s place yesterday, and you never broke a sweat. You might as well have been having some cereal over the business section.”

“I can’t help it that I don’t feel things like you do, Sam,” Dean points out, and Sam nods his head, running a hand through his hair.

“I know, I know. I just… wish I could share this with you.”

“You _do_ , man. I don’t—it doesn’t do anything for me, really, but watching you work, its… It’s almost like sex.” Dean laughs shortly as Sam’s expression tightens with hope. “Hell, sometimes it’s better than sex.”

“It is?” Sam asks, sounding painfully shy and vulnerable.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees. He steps closer and slides one hand into place against his brother’s cheek. “You’re the only one who can make me see things in color, Sammy. You’re the only one who makes it seem real.”

“Me and Dad,” Sam corrects, with a sour twist to his mouth.

“Dad’s not here, Dude. You are.” Dean allows himself a wry smile. “And you’re a bad fucking influence. I don’t think I’ve ever had to run this much clean-up on a case before. Dad gets wind of all these bodies, he’s gonna shit a brick.”

Sam smiles hopefully, glancing out the window toward the dark hulk of the Impala in the parking lot. “Then I guess we should make sure he doesn’t hear anything.”

Dean snorts indulgently, letting his hand slide from his brother’s cheek on his way to the door. “Okay, okay. I get the picture. It should be late enough to bring them inside now anyway.”

Sam bounds along in Dean’s wake, practically treading on his heels in his eagerness. “I want the boy. Can I? Dean, can I have him?”

Sam’s going to make a mess if Dean agrees. It’s evident in his gleaming eyes and twitching fingers. He’s going to make a mess, and it’s going to be loud. Maybe loud enough to bring some cops.

Dean’s eyes drop to his brother’s lips, and the ache in his chest eases—replaced by a warmer throb between his legs. He smiles as he pops open the trunk and looks in on the two bound and gagged kids waiting there.

“Promise to blow me after,” he says with another glance over at Sam, “and you can have them both.”

All in all, it’s a pretty good night.


	5. The Monster At the End of This Book

Chuck’s latest novel isn’t going well.

That’s not surprising, though. They never go well. They haven’t since the first bloody nightmare splattered into his head with the roar of gunfire.

God knows Chuck has tried to scrub his mind clean—he’s tried to drink himself into a deep enough oblivion that he can’t remember those dark glimpses. But the only thing that ever provides any relief is sending a fresh draft to his publisher. Even that temporary release doesn’t last for long; before the next volume of his Supernatural series—‘dark and twisted, like a road straight into Hell’, the Chicago Tribune calls it—is on the shelf, Chuck finds himself back at work, hunched low over his cursed typewriter and bashing away at the keys.

He dreams of pulling an Office Space on it someday. He dreams of just taking the hulking, brute chunk of metal out back and going to town with a baseball bat—like that’s going to take care of the twisted monsters living in his head.

About a year ago, he thought perhaps he just might be able to live the dream. There was one final apocalyptic glimpse of invisible hounds and a snarling, mangled feast—followed by a gaping, reddened maw that had to be Hell—and then silence. Three entire months of blessed silence.

And then the nightmares again. They’re even worse for the hiatus, actually—the older of his brothers ( _Dean of the cool green eyes and the smiling mask and oh God, what Chuck would give to never have to think of him again_ ) is both emptier than before and filled with some new, yawning hunger that doesn’t even begin to approach human emotion. The other is… Christ, Chuck didn’t think Sam could develop more of a taste for slaughter, but he’s managed it. Somehow, he’s managed a lot.

Their appetites for each other have blossomed as well. It’s getting harder and harder to edit around that, but Chuck knows exactly where his editor draws the line when it comes to incest. He’s been told often enough, when a sly caress or deep, lingering kiss has snuck through into good old Ronnie’s inbox.

All in all, writing isn’t so much a release these days, but a compulsion. One Chuck really, really wishes he could lay aside.

The doorbell sounds a pleasant escape, and Chuck almost trips over his bathrobe on his way to open the door. He doesn’t care who’s on the other side right now. Mailman or Mormon, he’s pulling them inside for a cup of coffee.

The two men standing on his doorstep don’t look like mailmen or Mormons, though. They’re both tall—one of them obscenely so—and both remarkably good looking. Chuck feels a slight chill as he gazes at them anyway—maybe because the shorter man’s eyes are too reminiscent of that night horror’s shade for comfort.

“You Chuck Shirley?” the green-eyed man asks. He’s smiling, pleasant as can be, but those eyes… All Chuck can see is the vaguely humanoid, wolf-snarl of the monster from his dreams.

Dean wears a jacket like the one this young man has on, Chuck remembers with a chill, and his own expression is wobbly as he swallows.

“The Chuck Shirley who wrote the Supernatural books?” the other guy adds.

Christ, this is all Chuck needs.

“Maybe,” he hedges. “Why?”

“I’m Dean,” the green-eyed man says, still with that wide, ‘everything’s awesome’ grin. The one that isn’t quite reaching his eyes anymore. “This is Sam. The Dean and Sam you’ve been writing about.”

For an instant, Chuck is certain it’s finally happened. His sanity has finally slipped its leash and left him completely bugshit.

Then he realizes that there’s a perfectly rational ( _and safe, don’t forget safe_ ) explanation for this.

“Look, uh,” he says awkwardly. “I appreciate your enthusiasm. Really, I do. It’s, uh, it’s always nice to hear from the fans. But, uh, for your own good, I strongly suggest you get a life. Or possibly seek some professional help.”

He starts to shut the door in their faces and the green-eyed man’s hand shoots out. He grips the edge of the door and shoves, knocking Chuck backwards and onto the floor.

Chuck stares up in horror as the two men step inside his house and shut the door behind them. Between one breath and the next, everything human and sane has bled out of the green-eyed man’s face. His mouth settles into a neutral, almost disinterested expression. His eyes are flat shards of stone. He looks… empty.

So terribly empty.

And maybe Chuck never could get a good visual of the Winchester brothers in his visions—nothing but vague impressions and those snarling, half-human half-wolf monsters—but he knows without a doubt who he’s looking at now.

The knowledge loosens Chuck’s bladder and he wets himself. Not that he’s aware of it, really. His attention is taken up by the hasty scramble backwards on his hands and the heels of his feet—an awkward crabwalk hampered by the loose folds of his bathrobe.

“No,” he breathes, staring up into Dean’s cool, detached eyes. “No, you’re not real.”

Sam is in the room too, of course—in the room and coming toward him—and that’s a problem. That’s a really huge problem.

But Chuck has always, way down in his gut where he was never really able to shake the lingering tension of his nightmares, been more afraid of Dean. Sam’s a sociopath. Maybe a psychopath—Chuck’s never gotten himself straight on that.

Dean, though… Chuck doesn’t know what the fuck he is. He only knows that something was left out when Dean was born, or was ripped out when Mary Winchester burned up on that ceiling—some essential component required to make a person human. There’s nothing reachable in Dean. There are no emotions to play off of—no anger to rouse for a merciful exit; no pity to incite for a stay of execution.

It’s only Sam Dean feels for—Sam and, once upon a time, John—and it’s like all of the emotions Dean should have had have been bottled up and funneled into those two links. Into a single link, now John’s dead and gone. Alistair played a good game getting Dean’s attention in Hell, but that was never more than a passing interest for Dean.

He has no real interest in Alistair—never did. He has no interest in torture either, but that’s precisely what makes him so good at it—that’s what Alistair has told Dean, anyway.

Dean is cucumber cool. He doesn’t get performance anxiety. He doesn’t make mistakes.

A perfect monster.

“No,” Chuck whimpers again, and Dean cocks his head in something that looks almost like confusion, but isn’t.

You have to care about something to be confused by it.

Chuck’s been inside Dean’s head; he knows how he must look to Dean. How much like a shadow he must seem; a breath of illusion in the room.

Dean’s eyes go vague as he turns his head away to look around, and Chuck is left with the impression that he ceased to exist the moment Dean stopped looking at him. He isn’t sure, given the surreal, nightmarish quality of the entire day, that Dean isn’t right. Maybe he isn’t here.

Fuck knows he doesn’t want to be.

Then Sam has him by the shirt and is hauling him up and carrying him over to his couch. Chuck just barely manages to come around enough to squirm by the time they reach the sofa, and then Sam releases him and sends him crashing down. He scrambles around, trying to right himself, and then stills at the sharp prick of metal against his throat.

“I ought to slit you open right now,” Sam breathes in his ear. “But I’ll admit to a certain amount of curiosity. Besides, you’re the first person I’ve met that Dean has expressed an interest in killing slowly. Putting all of our secrets out there in the open where Dad could read them. You’ve really managed to piss him off.”

“I’m sorry,” Chuck babbles, tears running down his face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. If I’d known, I—I would never have written anything!”

If he’d known, he would have offed himself the first time visions of these two popped into his head.

“Sammy,” Dean’s eerily detached voice calls from the direction of the front door. “I get first dibs.”

Chuck rolls his eyes up, and the smile he glimpses on Sam’s face is both ravenous and overjoyed at once.

“Yeah,” Sam says, straightening and removing the knife from Chuck’s throat. “Show me, Dean. Show me what it was like down there.”

Chuck takes the only escape route left to him.

He faints.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

Dean is just about ready to start in when the angel shows up.

He looks up from the gagged and naked man stretched out on the kitchen table and Castiel is there, frowning at him with a stern, disapproving expression that’s a good enough mimic of John’s to make Dean back up automatically.

“Put the knife down,” Castiel says.

“We don’t take orders from you,” Sam snarls. He’s beside Dean instantly, a source of heat and light, and Dean leans into him, reveling in the solidness of Sam’s body pressed against his own. He can’t get enough contact anymore. Forty years alone in Hell ( _although sometimes Dad was with him, wasn’t he? sometimes Dad was watching Dean work with approving, blind white eyes_ ) will do that to a guy.

The pain was real enough, though, Dean supposes as he thinks back. The pain and his lessons, which he almost misses in a diffuse way. Things felt different in Hell. He could almost imagine he felt as Sam does, there. The blood and the screams seemed to take on brighter dimensions for him—like fire seen silhouetted against a nursery wall.

Dean thinks that, if he could just learn not to fear Dad’s disapproval so much ( _dead; Dad is dead_ ), he could relearn those colors and that bright, shivery excitement. He could join with Sam’s revels, instead of standing as his pale reflection.

“Dean!”

Dean blinks, pulled from his thoughts by the sound of his name, and finds Sam gripping his arm while Castiel stares them both down.

“Dean,” Castiel says again, sternly, “You must not harm this man.”

Funny, that sounded like an order. It sounded as though Dean is meant to heed what this cardboard figure before him says.

“He is a prophet of the Lord,” Castiel adds. “And I must warn you both, that if you do not leave right now, I will be forced to take measures to protect him.”

“You need us to stop that bitch Lilith from breaking the rest of the seals,” Sam replies, giving Dean’s arm an encouraging squeeze. “You can’t kill us.”

The angel’s mouth twists in an expression of disgust as he says, “Much as I hate to admit it, you’re right. But we can and will separate you. You don’t need to work together to perform your duties. And don’t think we can’t find ways to motivate you. It would give many of my brethren great pleasure to bring a pair of rabid dogs to heel.”

“No one touches Dean,” Sam says. His grip tightens, and he tugs Dean back further, forcing Dean behind one broad shoulder.

“Don’t force us to and we won’t,” Castiel replies.

For a moment, Dean thinks Sam will ignore the angel’s threat, but suddenly he turns instead, pushing Dean for the door.

“What about the writer?” Dean protests. He was… he was almost looking forward to killing him.

“We’ll find someone else,” Sam murmurs soothingly. He kisses the nape of Dean’s neck as they approach the door. “It’s in you. I can practically taste it. We just need to dig a little deeper, is all.”

A tiny part of Dean worries about what Dad would think if he were here, and then dismisses the thought as irrelevant. Dad is dead. Sam is here. Sam is the only real thing Dean has left.

And if Sam needs him to relearn the intense colors and sounds of Hell, then Dean will. Come high water or angel, he’ll find a way. They both will.


	6. Abandon All Hope

“He’s different,” Jo says under her breath, leaning in closer to the angel. Castiel twists his head around and watches Dean pad through the kitchen for the refrigerator. Jo watches as well and can’t figure out what she ever saw in him. Looking at him now gives her the creeps. No real reason why it should, given he looks the same he always does, but…

“Cas, you don’t—you don’t think he’s possessed?” Jo checks.

Jo’s mom starts to her right, her own expression tight and concerned.

“No,” Castiel replies shortly. He gestures to the cards. “Shall we play?”

Jo can’t, though. Not with Dean in the room. Suddenly, he’s making her skin crawl in unpleasant ways. And she’s been a hunter too long to ignore this sort of instinct. She starts to draw her gun and then freezes when a hand closes around her wrist.

“Don’t,” Castiel says in a soft, intense voice. He’s leaning low, his arm extended out of sight below the table to stop her. There’s something like fear in his eyes. “Don’t draw his attention.”

Jo’s unease shoots straight past fear and into terror. Her pulse hammers in her head.

She realizes suddenly that Dean’s face is expressionless. There’s no fear there. No concern for their coming attempt against Lucifer. It’s as though someone gripped him tight and scrubbed all of the human off him, leaving behind a pretty shell. She watches him turn around, a glass of OJ in his hand, and for a moment she _does_ catch something when he meets her eyes.

A glimmer of hunger. Something low and restless and shifting.

Castiel’s hand tightens on her wrist and the expression is gone, hidden away beneath a warm, slightly weary smile. If Castiel wasn’t still gripping her tightly enough to bruise, Jo would think she had imagined the whole thing.

“Night,” Dean says pleasantly as he pads past, heading upstairs to the room he’s sharing with his brother.

Jo waits until she hears the door shut above them and then breathes, “What the fuck was that?”

Her mother’s shock is evident in the way she doesn’t bother to call Jo on her language.

“Sam’s been at him,” Castiel says grimly as he finally releases her and straightens.

“What the hell does that mean?” This time it’s Jo’s mama asking, her voice just as shaky as Jo feels.

Castiel shifts his eyes in a way that means he’s not going to answer, and Jo’s mama doesn’t hesitate before leaning over the table and gripping the lapel of his trench coat.

“You can either answer or you can kiss us both goodbye, Cas,” she insists. “I ain’t working with someone we can’t trust, and neither’s my girl.”

Jo would protest that, but she can still feel Dean’s eyes on her. Like cold oil slithering over her skin.

Castiel works Ellen’s ultimatum over for a few moments and then, grudgingly, says, “When Dean’s mother died in that fire, it broke something inside of him that wasn’t ever meant to be broken. Things still would have turned out fine, but matters slid further than we intended, and we never counted on Sam. His proclivities…complicated the situation.”

“What sort of proclivities?” Ellen demands.

“He craves pain and blood the way some men crave liquor,” Castiel answers.

Jo’s breath catches in her chest with the memory of being bent back over a bar. The darkness in Sam’s eyes. She’d thought then that it wasn’t all demon she saw, but she’s done her best to convince herself that glimpse was nothing but a childish response to the terror of the moment. Now, although she doesn’t want to credit Castiel’s words, she can’t bring herself to do otherwise.

“I don’t think Dean will ever match Sam in that hunger,” Castiel adds, “but he’s at least learning to appreciate it through his brother.”

“They’re—” Ellen starts, and then growls, “You’re an angel, damn it. You’re supposed to be one of the good guys! If you’re telling the truth, then how the hell could you protect them? How could you leave them walking around like this?”

“They have a higher purpose to serve,” Castiel replies simply. “The hundreds lost along their path are nothing compared to the billions who would be lost without them. So we endure. And I watch over them to ensure they do as little harm as possible.” He somehow fixes Ellen and Jo with the same meaningful look. “I swear to you they will not harm either of you, nor will they jeopardize this mission. They want Lucifer dead too much. Dean recognizes the danger Lucifer presents to Sam, and he’s desperate to keep his brother for himself.”

He smiles then, grimly and humorlessly.

“I believe Sam looks on this as a challenge of his abilities. And he’s enjoying Dean’s enthusiasm for the hunt. He won’t do anything to jeopardize that.”

“It’s sick,” Jo breathes, and is slightly heartened by her mama’s agreeing nod.

“Please,” Castiel rejoins. “We need you. The world needs you. You can go on your way without a backward glance when Lucifer is dead, but please. Help us in this one last thing.”

In the end, Jo agrees, but she can’t help but shiver the next morning when Dean brushes past her on his way to the car.

He doesn’t even seem to notice.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

Dean finds the chipped ring wrapped in a charred piece of cloth weeks later. It’s inside his brother’s trophy bag, which Dean was rifling through in lieu of anything better to do. Dean’s sure he’s seen the ring before, and maybe the bit of cloth, but he can’t quite place them.

“Where did these come from?” he asks, lifting his head.

Sam doesn’t bother looking up from his knife sharpening on the bed. “Where did what come from?”

“Uh. Ring. Bit of rag.”

Now Sam’s head comes up with a sudden, sharp movement. Blur of color in a grey world. He smiles and it’s cutting—knives for teeth, and Dean wants them on his skin. He loses interest in the ring and cloth, dropping them and moving toward the bed.

Sam sets the knife in his hand aside when he sees Dean coming. Leaning back, he spreads his legs and widens his smile into a grin that’s somehow challenging and inviting at the same time.

Stripping Sam without stabbing either of them is an exercise in care, but there’s something to be said for the peripheral gleam of steel. The blades clink as Sam’s shifting knocks them into one another, and the sound ignites Dean’s blood just as much as Sam’s mouth against his throat. Sam’s hands are at work on Dean’s clothing as well, and by the time he has Sam naked, all Dean needs to do is step out of his jeans and crawl onto the bed over his brother.

Sam hisses as Dean hauls one of his brother’s legs up over his hip, and now the knives need to go. Dean won’t see Sam hurt, and he doesn’t trust himself well enough to take care with his own movements. Dropping Sam’s thigh, he leans over and starts tossing knives onto the floor.

“Hey,” Sam protests, coming up on one elbow.

Dean silences him with a stern glance and Sam doesn’t do more than pout and grumble under his breath as Dean strains and stretches over him, making sure the bed is clear of pointed obstacles. After he’s sure they’re safe, Dean smoothes two fingertips over the slight cut on Sam’s side with a frown.

This color is too much. It’s unpleasant and screaming in his head. Sounds like Hell. Smells like charnel and desecrated things.

It makes Dean’s head hurt.

“Hey,” Sam says again, calling him back. His voice is gentle this time. His fingers are tender as they slide over the side of Dean’s face. “I’m okay, Dean. I’m right here.”

“They hurt you,” Dean says, although it isn’t true. He knows it isn’t true. But his heart, awake only when it comes to Sam, and confused from sporadic, inconsistent use, isn’t so sure. It seems he remembers Sam from Hell as well. He remembers being forced to watch as shadows revisited all of Sam’s sins upon him tenfold while Dad whispered in Dean’s ear.

 _He’s a monster, Dean. He deserves it. You both do._

“Dean!” Sam says, more sharply, and Dean’s body tenses as he comes back front and center.

Sam’s body is under him, and Sam looks slightly distressed, but… Sam’s nudity and their relative positions are distracting. Dean slides his hand from Sam’s side down along his flank and onto his thigh, hoisting Sam’s leg higher around his waist.

“Hang on,” he warns, and then thrusts forward, filling Sam roughly and instantly, the way Sam likes. This is hurting Sam too, he knows, but it doesn’t seem to count the same in his head—maybe because Sam asks for this. He begs Dean for it, sometimes.

Dean loses track of time now that he’s inside of his brother. There are too many emotions and colors to keep track of—the world lit up like a fireworks display—and Dean’s systems are on overload even attempting it. Eventually, of course, there’s a final, roaring wash and Dean’s muscles clench as pleasure crashes through his body. He becomes aware again slowly and groggily, collapsed against Sam’s chest with Sam’s fingers tracing contentedly over his shoulders.

“Sorry,” he mutters, starting to push himself up.

“No. Dean, wait. Can you—can you just lie here for a while this time? Please?” Sam sounds oddly tentative, although Dean doesn’t understand why that might be, considering that Sam’s request is easy enough to fulfill. He relaxes again, letting Sam support his weight, and Sam exhales in a languid sigh. One of his hands leaves Dean’s back and finds his hair, stroking through it in a way that soothes Dean right back down towards unconsciousness.

He’s more than half asleep when Sam finally says, “They’re from Jo and Ellen.”

“What?” Dean mumbles, and then remembers the question that got him into this. “Oh. They’re from who?”

“Jo and Ellen,” Sam repeats, as though it’s supposed to mean something to Dean.

He scrunches his face up, thinking, and finds a vague, disjointed impression of blond hair and fire. Could be anyone, really.

“The Harvelles,” Sam prods. “Meg sicced a hellhound on Jo? Got her all torn up? She and Ellen opted to stay behind and give us time to get clear? This ringing any bells?”

Well, it is now. The hellhound part, anyway. Those were in vivid color, even if he couldn’t see them. He remembers being torn open too well for them to be otherwise. When he focuses on those memories harder, he does seem to recall two women. There was even a little bit of color around the younger one—Dean catching the edges of Sam’s excitement as they passed off the trigger to her and starting to perk up himself.

“Yeah,” he says. “I remember. What’re their things doing in your bag, though?”

Sam chuckles softly. “I know. It’s cheating, sort of. But I figure, we basically got them killed, so they still count.”

As far as logic goes, Dean supposes he can actually follow that without much difficulty. Neither of those women would have been anywhere near that storefront if it hadn’t been for them.

“This why you insisted on swinging back by Carthage?” he checks.

“Well, where else was I going to find anything? Besides, someone had to pick up their effects.”

“Freak. If anyone ever catches us, you’re going to be in deep shit with that bag of yours.”

“Do you care?” Sam replies, his hand stilling. “Does it really matter if anyone knows anymore?”

Before Hell, Dean would have been able to answer with a definite affirmative. Even during the first few months after he came back, John’s opinion was a tangible weight at the back of Dean’s mind. But John has grown dimmer lately. He’s fading away more every day, leaving nothing but Sam’s light to guide the way.

After a few minutes, Dean decides that he’s tired of putting in so much effort on a dead man’s behalf.

“No,” he says, snuggling closer to his brother. “I guess it doesn’t matter at all.”


	7. Weekend At Bobby's

‘You’re better off dealing with me, you know,’ Crowley said, and as Bobby watches the Impala roll down the driveway toward him, he wonders if the demon wasn’t right. He remembers what Ellen told him before they went into Carthage. Things Castiel has hinted at since, when Bobby’s had occasion to speak to him. And there’s always been something off about John’s boys—well, Sam anyway. Dean was fine right up until the apocalypse hit the damn fan.

Then, for a while there, Bobby was sure that Ellen was right. Dean’s bigger than life personality started to look thin around the edges. Bobby started to catch him running down in the middle of conversations—like what they were dealing with wasn’t important enough to keep his interest. Once or twice, when the boys stayed over and Bobby ran into Dean in a darkened hallway in the middle of the night ( _Bobby on his way back from the bathroom, Dean on his way in_ ), Bobby had gotten the most horrible crawling sensation across his skin. Like he was closed up in that hall with something dark and unnatural instead of a man he’d watched grow up.

He had dreaded what would be left behind following Sam’s leap into that gaping pit in the earth—he’d been sure Dean would… aw, hell, he was sure Dean’d snap and go on some sort of killing spree or something. He doesn’t know what might have happened if Sam hadn’t shown up later that same night, stepping in out of the shadows and damn near giving Bobby a heart attack. Dean, though, he lit up when he caught sight of Sam. Seemed almost like his old self again.

It’s Sam that worries Bobby most now. Sam and his newfound coldness; his dedication to the hunt. It’s Sam whom Bobby keeps an eye on as Dean greets him, dragging Bobby into a tight hug and congratulating him on having Jiminy firmly back on his shoulder.

“That’s a conscience, you moron,” Bobby says automatically, “Not a soul.” Still, the reminder cheers him somewhat and he pushes his concerns from his mind as he says, “But I really do got to thank you boys.”

“Ah, don’t sweat it, Bobby,” Dean answers as he releases Bobby and backs up a step. “I mean, you’ve said we’re like sons to you often enough. It’s about damn time we started acting like it.”

Over Dean’s shoulder, Bobby notices Sam’s eyes narrow and his gut clenches with a sudden chill. The expression is gone instantly, though, and the broad smile that replaces it seems genuine enough that Bobby doubts he saw anything to begin with. He doesn’t flinch back—much—when Sam goes to clap him on the back.

Still, he isn’t all that keen on being alone with these two right now ( _tell the truth and shame the devil, old man; you’ve been thinking about cutting them loose for over a year_ ), and he’s grateful when Sam mentions after only his second celebratory beer that they should probably get going. He feels nothing but relief as the Impala’s headlights disappear into the distance.

And he isn’t terribly surprised when, later that night, he pricks awake with a knife at his throat.

“Which one’a you is it?” he asks, being very careful to stay still.

“It’s Sam,” the shadow looming over him answers, although Bobby’s eyes have already adjusted enough so he can pick out features.

“Sam. Can’t say as I’m happy to see you.”

“It’s nothing personal,” Sam says, and then laughs. “Hell, who am I kidding? It’s plenty personal.”

The knife presses in, and Bobby feels a brief but sharp sting. He hisses, then bites his lip as he feels a slow trickle of blood run down his throat.

“I can’t have you coming between me and Dean, Bobby,” Sam says. “All this father figure bullshit. I just got him away from Dad. I’m not having you convince him he needs to put his masks back up.”

“Way I see it, you’re the one who’s been making Dean act funny,” Bobby argues, buying himself some more time as he creeps his hand closer to the gun he took care to place beneath his pillow.

“You don’t know him. You don’t know the _real_ him. None of you do. He’s a chameleon. It’s funny, really. He doesn’t understand human emotions, but he’s better at aping them than most of you assholes are at feeling them. And I’m sick and tired of seeing him debase himself like that.”

“Well boo fucking hoo,” Bobby mutters, and brings the gun out from beneath his pillow. The business end of the barrel gets pressed against Sam’s temple as he cocks the pistol for added emphasis. “Now get that fucking knife out of my face.”

The blade doesn’t move, though. Instead, Sam’s mouth spreads in a slow smile.

All right. He asked for it.

Bobby pulls the trigger, expecting the reverberation of the shot to travel up the length of his arm. Instead, there’s a dry, hollow click.

Bobby’s balls proceed to crawl up into his body.

“You didn’t think I’d leave the gun loaded when I woke you up for our little talk, did you?” Sam asks.

In the face of utter defeat, Bobby decides to go out of this world with as much dignity as he can muster. With a derisive, haughty expression, he meets Sam’s eyes and asks, “So, now what?”

Sam’s grin widens unbearably, and then the pain begins.

$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$

“So, where’d you go last night?”

“Hmm?” Sam replies—far too innocently, in Dean’s opinion.

“Car’s got another fifty miles on her,” Dean answers as he reverses out of the parking lot.

“Oh. Yeah, uh. I got a craving.”

“For fifty mile pizza?”

His question gets Dean the smile he was looking for as Sam replies, “It’d be twenty-five mile pizza. And no. I needed to work something out of my system.”

Ah. But instead of the settling sensation that comprehension usually brings, Dean feels an unaccustomed nudge of emotion. After a moment, when the nudge doesn’t disappear, he asks, “Without me?”

Sam looks over in surprise. “I didn’t think you’d care.”

“I, uh…” Dean hedges, sliding his hands over the steering wheel. “I might. I, uh. I like to watch you work, I guess.”

Sam doesn’t say anything at that, but he’s practically purring as he relaxes back into his seat and lets his legs fall open. Dean sneaks a glance over and has the feeling they won’t be driving too far today. They might have to hit up a bank, pick up some funds. Take care of some witnesses. Scratch an itch.

Dean glances in the rearview mirror again as he goes to change lanes and notices a cap lying in the back seat. Sam’s trophy from last night, no doubt. At this rate, they’ll need to stop by the storage unit soon; unload Sam’s latest trove of treasures.

Oh well, at least one of them travels light.

Humming to himself, Dean turns his eyes back on the road before them. Sam at his side, the open road before him, and a new, warming light in his chest… He isn’t sure there’s much more he could ask for.

All in all, it’s shaping up to be a damn good day.


End file.
